Goose Gossage threw a high, hard one at Baseball 2001. You gotta love him for his honesty.

“It’s gotten so soft today,” Gossage, one of the greatest closers of all-time, said yesterday before the Old Timers’ game, featuring the ’61 Yankees. “You throw at a guy now and you are out of the game. It’s a joke . . . I wasn’t a headhunter, but, boy, I could skim some balls off guys’ helmets. You’ve got to have that fear factor to be successful, and it’s not there anymore.”

“It’s stupid,” Gossage said. “Then why pay these pitchers? Then let’s play T-ball. That’s how the owners can save millions, take the pitchers off the mound, we can save a lot of time. It’s a flat-out joke. To hit today is a piece of cake compared to what it used to be.

“If a guy hit a home run, the next mother-bleeper, he was on his butt, and he expected it, there weren’t any fights, it was just part of the game,” Gossage said. “It’s like Little League, that’s what separated the tough kids from the average kids, ‘I’m afraid of the ball, mommy. I don’t want to play baseball, that game’s scary.’ That fear is no longer there.”

Gossage said if he had been pitching against Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in their pursuit of Roger Maris’ 61, the sluggers would have gone down hard.

“They would be undressed,” Gossage said. “You’re not going to hit one off me. If you hit it, you’re going to deserve it. It’s not going to be out over the plate time after time after time after time. You never saw them undressed. It was like these guys were afraid to come inside. Bleep, it was like taking bleeping batting practice. It was a joke.”

“The hitters come up there with armor on today, that’s a joke,” Gossage said. “I told them today that man, if a guy came up there with armor on against me, he’d have to put (armor) on his kneecaps because that’s where I’m going.”

Gossage insisted he would never purposely try to hit anyone in the head and said that led to a feud between him and Billy Martin because Martin wanted Gossage to bean Billy Sample in an exhibition game. Gossage refused.